<div align="center" class="style3">First steps in ontology development - A hands-on tutorial</div>

Introduction to Ontology Development and Tools Part I

First steps in ontology development: A hands-on tutorial


at the International Conference on Biomedical Ontology (ICBO 2011)

26 July 2011, Buffalo, USA



Instructors:
Mathias Brochhausen
Amanda Hicks

Objective

The aim of our tutorial is to introduce newcomers in ontology development to the practice of building an ontology in OWL DL using the Protégé editor. We will show how to use BFO as Upper Ontology to facilitate the ontological analysis of a domain. Our focus will be on practical issues of ontology development for research or business projects. The first part of the tutorial will be introductory teaching providing the participants with basic knowledge about OWL, Protégé, BFO and best practice in ontology development. The second, larger part will consist of hands-on training, with the participants creating ontologies and discussing issues in ontological development with the tutors as they arise.

The tutorial will help researchers with experience either in biomedicine, computing, or ontological theory to overcome initial problems in creating an actual ontology coded in OWL DL. Our aim is to foster the creation of initial ontology projects for small-scale use and further improvement by the scientific communities, for instance the OBO Foundry.

Intended audience

This half-day tutorial will be of interest for anyone starting in the following fields: ontology design and development, applied ontologies, formal ontology.

Preparation

Each participant should come with some idea for a small ontology she wants to create. In addition a Wi-Fi-enabled laptop with the latest build of Protégé Ontology Editor 4.1 (free download from here) is needed.

Preparatory reading:

Matthew Horridge: Protégé OWL tutorial (free download here)